Reality TV becomes a scandalous rapture in my household. With it, any fragment of real life is always enough for us to feel connected with the cast. But do we feel connection, or a catharsis that directs anger and mockery at the contestants? Reality TV is clearly another cultivated story for the masses, but its non-fictional elements, like off-screen drama, Twitter quips, and a candid my-side-of-the-story allow for a more powerful judgement of those involved. Here, I get to wrap myself in a protective cloak of cold judgement, glare at the TV, and project my flaws onto these manufactured personas.

My housemates and I watch Married at First Sight UK. To judge, I laugh and say ‘What a nasty man. So icky. Can’t she just marry someone else afterwards?’ With another couple, I say, ‘Oh wow, I feel so sorry for him- his new wife is awful.’ But underneath all the laughter, there is a much louder subtext that beams through it. In between each gasp for air, you can almost hear us non-verbally communicating, ‘at least no one feels sorry for me. That would be awful.’ Below is a wedding photo of unhappy couple Whitney Hughes and Duka Cavolli. From the moment they met, she regretted everything; eyeroll; huff; a hand covering her face; sigh. How lacking in manner. How evil of her. Even Duka, who was rather tolerant of her dissatisfaction, said that he was disappointed about his experience with her. He also affirmed that even though Whitney grieving her mother’s death ‘could be’ the reason why she acted like that, it was ‘still no excuse.’ He reveals that he lived through civil war ‘up to the age of ten,’ but he doesn’t allow his ‘tribulations’ to inhibit his kindness towards others. So that’s a bit careless of her. Is she unable to do the inner work too? Why hasn’t she seen a therapist? There is so much baggage, so many secrets, and so much discourse-

Stop. Why do we need to know all of this?

Photo Credit: E4

It is because we find a superiority that we struggle to find elsewhere. My housemates also watch the new season of The Apprentice. The brief is to pitch a discount-bought item from Shakespeare’s birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon. Carlo attempts to negotiate with two antique shopkeepers for a peacock-feathered quill. But even after one says that ‘I’ve gone as far as I can go with this product’ and offers a £10 minimum, Carlo tries to cajole them by asking if ‘they ever feel good when they do a good gesture for people? How does it make you feel when you do something kind?’ Yeah, right, I think to myself. I know I can be more subtle than that. When one housemate says ‘Why do I watch these shows? They make me so angry!’, I can relate. And being angry feels so good. Why?

This anger is not exclusive to The Apprentice either. I indulge in a ghastly episode of ‘Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares’. He shows a vile cluster of mossy build-ups on a chicken breast. What nasty restaurant owners. Why would they do something like that? Think of the customers. It’s strangely interesting to point my finger at while eating, because if my chicken is ever dry, at least it’s not moldy. I also don’t know what it’s like to have any customers. So naturally, I love judging people who do, and thinking that I could run a restaurant so much better than they could. “This is how I should spend this hour,” I think. Pointing away from myself, my dirty stove, the dishes in the sink and the dust on the kitchen floor. In the moment, I realise that reality TV is a guilt-free way of projecting whatever shame follows us around the house, and it’s intoxicating to focus on someone else’s trials and tribulations for a while. But is anything I project onto actually real?

Photo Credit: Channel 4

But our judgement towards cultivated characters is not exclusive to their hygiene. ‘As anyone who watches the show regularly would know, Love Island [and other shows] is a combination of reality and produced elements that are reflective of what’s happening in the villa”, according to a claim made to Metro Magazine by a representative of the show Love Island. They refer to the show as a ‘fair and accurate representation of villa life.’ However, people from multiple shows reveal the reality of ‘reality’. One former Love Island contestant told Grazia Daily that ‘It is very disingenuous… we were treated like performing animals and the current cast are still.’ Apparently, producers cultivate specific situations to raise emotional tension in the villa. Contestants Jack Fowler and Georgia Steele shared what Olivia Wheeler calls an ‘awkward kiss’. One contestant alleges that it was filmed ‘three or four times’ to shoot it correctly. The word, “awkward” implies Jordan has the same reaction as my housemates and I- cringe. A knot of cringe thrashes around in our stomachs when watching Married at First Sight- that one husband gives his new wife a Kubrick stare and asks her for just one smooch. Therefore, producers deliberately cultivate reality TV to give us a rush of superiority, so that we can say, ‘No one wants to chew on my face like that. What a relief.’

Photo Credit: ITV/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK

However, some parts of reality TV are both true and happy. Radio Times gives a long list of couples who are still together, and 17 out of 89 restaurants from Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares are still open. But the cultivated cringe can allow the catharsis we want. And the fact that these are real people allows for the catharsis to feel more genuine- the producers turn them into scapegoats for us. The subreddit r/KitchenNightmares centres around Ramsay’s show. On a post criticising how fake it is, user u/ItsAShell_Game writes that because of the decline in quality as the seasons go on, ‘I’m not as invested in the people, the episodes do seem shorter, the style of editing does seem a lot different.’ Without the intensified drama, the audience disengages. Here, theatricality and exaggeration are necessary; the waterphone sound effect during tense moments; the yelling; the owner’s subtle eye role at Gordon’s recommendations. Without them, the narrative is boring to people. My housemates and I do not want to see every part of a person’s life. But it seems like the exaggerated parts there to intensify the real events in these people’s lives. In these shows, the stakes are higher because of real and scripted elements- it’s not purely one or the other. We can project more when there are both, and we can finally feel like we are better than the people on our TVs.